The previously iOS-only social app Clubhouse has begun its Android beta rollout in the US, with other countries to follow “gradually”. Next in line for the beta will be “other English-speaking countries”, followed by “the rest of the world”.
According to the FAQ, Clubhouse will be supported on Android 8.0 and above. While the Clubhouse team announced its intention to “open it up to everyone soon”, the Android version will, as of now, still require an invite or waitlist signups to get access to the app.
Several features are currently missing from the Android beta, including localization, club creation and management, Twitter or Instagram account linking, and reporting someone via the recent speaker choice (although the FAQ says that it’s coming soon).
“Our plan over the next few weeks is to collect feedback from the community, fix any issues we see and work to add a few final features like payments and club creation before rolling it out more broadly,” said a Clubhouse blog post.
The post also said, “As a part of the effort to keep the growth measured, we will be continuing the waitlist and invite system, ensuring that each new community member can bring along a few close friends. As we head into the summer and continue to scale out the backend, we plan to begin opening up even further, welcoming millions more people in from the iOS waitlist, expanding language support, and adding more accessibility features, so that people worldwide can experience Clubhouse in a way that feels native to them.”
Clubhouse, described as a “space for casual, drop-in audio conversations”, launched on iOS in March 2020. In February 2021, Sensor Tower (via The Washington Post) said that the app had around 5.5 million installations worldwide, with approximately 42% of its downloads being in the US, 16% in Japan, and 10% in Germany. The previous month, a Clubhouse conversation involving Elon Musk and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev hit the app’s room limit of 5,000 people, resulting in other users using overflow rooms to listen to it.
Sensor Tower (via Giz China) also reported that the app had 2.7 million downloads in March 2021, although April 2021 saw a 72% decrease in downloads. Some countries including Oman and China have banned the app.
